"a pretty nutty amount of power": Does anybody have any problem with Tesla's insane suggestions that they'll use 100% solar to power a large fleet of cars for "free" across the US and Canada?

Today Tesla CEO Elon Musk said the electric car company will accelerate original plans to blanket the U.S. and Canada with free charging for all Tesla models “forever.“

A total number of “200-ish” solar powered Superchargers within the next couple of years are planned for a staged roll out....Presently these algorithms are in beta stage and Musk said they will cut the minutes required to charge a 60-kwh Model S to about 20-22 minutes without stating time to replenish an 85-kwh Model S, but presumably these will also take two-thirds the present time.

One-hundred and twenty kilowatts of energy being dumped into the battery pack of a Tesla car is about 60 times what a house normally uses, he said.

“That’s a pretty nutty amount of power,” Musk said to media on a conference call....The estimated cost of each station is $150,000 per non-solar station, and $300,000 for the solar-equipped ones. It was not clear whether grid storage would add to this cost....Tesla offers its maverick business model that essentially amounts to including free fuel with every car purchased.

The technology at the heart of the Supercharger was developed internally and leverages the economies of scale of existing charging technology already used by the Model S, enabling Tesla to create the Supercharger device at minimal cost. The electricity used by the Supercharger comes from a solar carport system provided by SolarCity, which results in almost zero marginal energy cost after installation. Combining these two factors, Tesla is able to provide Model S owners free long distance travel indefinitely.

Each solar power system is designed to generate more energy from the sun over the course of a year than is consumed by Tesla vehicles using the Supercharger. This results in a slight net positive transfer of sunlight generated power back to the electricity grid. In addition to lowering the cost of electricity, this addresses a commonly held misunderstanding that charging an electric car simply pushes carbon emissions to the power plant. The Supercharger system will always generate more power from sunlight than Model S customers use for driving. By adding even a small solar system at their home, electric car owners can extend this same principle to local city driving too.

Tesla Motors regularly gave out a crucial number that gave the public a good idea of how much demand existed for its electric cars.On Wednesday, the company said it was no longer going to provide that data, explaining that it was “no longer a meaningful metric.”...The doubters, however, think there may not be that many buyers of Tesla’s cars beyond the electric car enthusiasts who have swooped in early. As a result, an early surge in sales could soon wane, they argue.

1 comment:

Tesla's hyper hype continues. The solar charging station photo shows 6 bays with a canopy holding 100 solar panels, generating about 20kW peak power. At an average of 6 hrs peak sun per day, that comes to 120 kWhr generated per day.

Tesla hypes that up to 50% charge is possible in 20 minutes, which is 42kWhr for an 85kWh model. That means the 6 bay charging station can supercharge only 3 vehicles PER DAY using solar power. The rest of the visiting vehicles use the grid, which as we know is powered by Satan's cobbles.